This blog is for libertarians who are mainly of the voluntaryist, laissez-faire, and anarchistic and agorist variety and who want to sound off on their thoughts on issues of the day as well as politics, current events, and other liberty-oriented projects of interest. This blog is pro-liberty, anti-state, anti-war, and pro-free market.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Apparently the rift between Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his former supporters is wider than originally perceived in the mainstream American press.

Interestingly enough, some U.S. officials are saying that the Iranian cleric leaders "cooked the votes." But isn't that what the U.S. government has been doing here in the United States as well? Aren't we hearing some hypocrisy from them on this matter?

This latest tidbit gives new meaning to the old phrase "The pot calling the kettle black."

The latest dust-up between Senator (and Democratic presidential candidate) Barack Obama and his minister Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright showcases how disingenuous "pro-peace" Barack and his pro-war cronies are to the electorate.

'We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,' Wright said. 'We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.'

Obama blasted the reverend's statement, calling it "inflammatory" and "appalling."

'I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies,' Obama said. 'I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue.'

Wright also condemned the U.S. for its assaults on the African-American community, especially with the federal government's agenda of importing drugs, training terrorists, and exporting guns.

Furthermore, he said the following:

'The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing "God Bless America." No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.'

While he is right about the government's past treatment of blacks on American soil, he forgets easily that the African-American community is responsible for its own self-sabotage and acceptance of the modern welfare-warfare state. Furthermore, his disparagement of "America" is not so much directed at the American government, but at the American people. That's where he is wrong on that point, yet he is right to criticize the government's domestic policy on drug abuse prevention and its foreign policy of interventionism.

The Republican Party has been and always will be the party of big business, big militarism, protectionism, mercantilism, jingoism, xenophobia, and economic fascism (socialism for the rich), tyranny, and dictatorship. This certainly explains their great love for evil and diabolical yet insane neocon John McCain and their ardent contempt for and hatred and rejection of Ron Paul.

An excerpt of Ron Paul's upcoming new book A Revolution: A Manifesto is now available on Amazon.com's website. The online company has done so by adding it to its "Look Inside" program. If you click on the book cover icon on the same page showing the book and the editorial review, you'll notice that it only shows a six-page excerpt of the book.

Some browsers may not work very well when you try to take a gander at the first few pages of the book, so you may have to use Firefox, which allows you to look at those pages. I'm using Internet Explorer, so I haven't had any problems with it. But for those of you who can look at it, the excerpt is well worth reading. I have a feeling that the publisher will be swamped with so many pre-orders that it may expedite its release sooner than it was expected.

For those who are not aware, the book is scheduled to be out on April 30. From what I've read in the pages so far, it's worth every word on which it's printed.

Suprisingly, an election was held in Tamarac, Florida in which nobody voted this past Wednesday. Apparently none of the registered voters came to their precincts in the city to decide on the issue of annexing a nearly unincorpoated neighborhood. This latest eyebrow-raising shocker suggests that none of the 68 registered voters in the city believed that their vote was going to count anyway given their feeling that the system is rigged at their expense; therefore, they pondered what the point would be to go their precincts and vote on a proposal that they knew they would not benefit from it in the end.

What's even interesting about this incident is that none of the polling employees were incentivized to vote on the issue as well. It appears that their feelings regarding the proposal and the system of voting were mutual. Of course, the vote probably would have decided the fate of the neighborhood, but it's not as if they were interested in doing that anyway.

If the city really wanted the community to go through with the annexation, wouldn't they have somehow carried it out, the opposition of the electorate notwithstanding? That seems to be the case anyway, except that you won't hear the city officials willingly cop to that.

Here's an interesting excerpt in the AP report:

The cost of keeping a polling site open for 12 hours with no voters: $2,500.

Because the city lost that much money to keep the precinct open for that amount of time, wouldn't they have slapped a tax on the voters to recoup that loss, even if the electorate didn't want it? That revenue wouldn't have necessarily gone to make up for the loss of revenue during the entire time of the election on that day, and the officials probably would have raised that money to make it appear as if the money would have gone to make up the shortfall. Would they really have accomplished that? Not likely, but nothing what the government does, especially at the local level, would surprise anyone (including Yours Truly) at this or any other point.

Here's another disturbing part in that same report:

City officials could take another approach to annexing the area. One option is a mail-in ballot election.

I'm convinced that they would pursue this approach, given the fact that the election was a dud. However, I'm more convinced that, if the voters had shown up and the election was a dud and the vote totals produced an outcome that was unsatisfactory to the city officials, they would have taken another approach just the same because the outcome wasn't exactly what they wanted.

About Me

Pro-Liberty Poems

Let Liberty Ringby Teresa A. Bridges-Kemp

Let liberty ringThroughout this great landLet liberty ringIt’s time for the people to make a standLet liberty ringLet our voices ring clear and trueLet liberty ringOur freedoms are up to me and youLet liberty ringLike our forefathers wrote aboutLet liberty ringLet it give its mighty shoutTo allow liberty to be a realityWe must wake up and standFor all that we know and believeWe the people are the ones who have control of this landAnd our own sweet Liberty!

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A Foreign Policy of Non-interventism Quotes

"Peace, honest friendship, and commerce with all nations; entangling alliances with none." -- 3rd President Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

"But she does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." - Sec. of State John Quincy Adams in reference to America to the Congress, July 4, 1821.

"War is the health of the state." - Randolph Bourne, a progressive writer whose quote happens to be the title of his unfinished essay which he never completed at the time of his death in 1918.

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Do you have any news tips that you have for me and my bloggers to discuss on LLR? Do you know of any other political blogs that I and my bloggers can analyze, dissect, and criticize? Do you know of libertarian articles and op-eds that can be publicized on the site?

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Todd Andrew BarnettFounder and Publisher ofLet Liberty Ring

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Words of Wisdom from LLR Publisher and Editor Todd Andrew Barnett

"A society that embraces the conventional wisdom saying that government is the be-all and end-all to every problem in the world is a society that embraces tyranny, violence, theft, and the initiation of force against our neighbors." -- on the American people's support of the state.

"A society operating under the paradigm of a true unrestricted free market and without a state is the society that best achieves liberty." -- on what human liberty should mean to American society and the entire world.

Pro-Liberty Quotes

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William S. Smith, November 13, 1787